College Binge Drinkers Happier Than Non-Bingers: Study

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DENVER — The allure of the beer funnel for college students may
have less to do with the need for a buzz and more to do with a
desire for social status, new research finds.

College students who
binge drink report being happier with their social lives than
their non-binging counterparts, according to a new study
presented here today (Aug. 20) at the annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association. And the higher a student's
social status, the more likely they were to binge drink.

The study looked at students at just one liberal arts college in
the Northeast, but it could help explain why schools tend to have
consistent levels of binge drinking over time, said study
researcher Carolyn Hsu, a sociologist at Colgate University in
New York.

"I would guess it has to do with feeling like you belong and
whether or not you're doing what a 'real' college student does,"
Hsu told LiveScience. "It seems to be more about certain groups
getting to define what that looks like." [ Adolescent
Angst: 10 Facts About the Teen Brain ]

Reluctant drinkers

Binge drinking is defined as downing four or more drinks at a
sitting for women and five or more for men. For the purposes of
this study, students were classified as binge drinkers if they
binged once every two weeks or more.

Hsu and her colleagues surveyed 1,595 students at a small
Northeastern liberal arts college. (As part of the conditions for
doing the study, Hsu could not reveal the college's identity.) In
initial research, Hsu said, the researchers noticed a theme of
students complaining about high levels of
binge drinking.

"One thing that was a recurrent comment were students who said,
'Everyone drinks here. … I don't want to get drunk, but I feel
like I don't belong here if I don't.' … Then the next person
would write, 'I don't really want to drink, but this is what
everyone else does.' And the next person would write, 'You know,
I don't mind drinking a little, but I don't want to get smashed,
but everyone does that,'" Hsu said.

"I look at this and I think, 'Why don't you guys just have a
party without drinking? None of you want to be doing this!'" Hsu
added.

The reluctant drinkers raised the question of why students felt
so obligated to binge drink, Hsu said, so she and her colleagues
decided to take a closer look. A number of comments further
linked binge drinking to wealthy students on campus, particularly
fraternity and sorority members; the researchers also wanted to
find out if those perceptions were accurate.

Getting smashed for social satisfaction

To do so, they compared students' social status to their
rates of binge drinking and to their satisfaction with their
social lives. At this particular school, whites are the majority,
so white students were considered to have more social status,
along with wealthier students, men, straight students and
fraternity or sorority members.

The first finding was that the students' anecdotal perceptions
about who drinks were right. Higher-status students had higher
rates of binge drinking, whether status was defined as race,
wealth, class,
sexual orientation or Greek life participation. These same
high-status students also had the highest satisfaction with their
college social lives.

But binge drinking actually seemed to contribute to this
satisfaction. High-status binge drinkers were happier with their
social lives than high-status students who didn't binge drink.
And low-status students who binge drank had higher social
satisfaction than their non-binging peers.

"They almost seemed to move themselves up a little bit, or to put
it in more efficient language, they now have higher levels of
social satisfaction," Hsu said.

Hsu was quick to note that binge drinking is not the smartest way
to improve your chances of college
happiness. Binge drinking was also associated with higher
rates of sexual victimization and academic troubles, among other
nasty consequences, she said. [ 7
Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health ]

"We think this is a terrible thing," Hsu said.

Eradicating binge drinking

Hsu hopes to expand the research to other schools, but said the
findings could explain how
campus culture fosters binge drinking. Even though student
bodies turn over every four years and universities go through
many changes in demographics over time, binge-drinking rates
remain remarkably stable, she said. It's possible that the
association of binge drinking with status explains why the
practice is so hard to eradicate.

At the university studied, "this behavior is so associated with
being higher status that if you don't do it, you don't have as
high levels of social satisfaction," she said.

One glimmer of hope, Hsu said, was that students in religious
organizations who did not binge drink were more socially
satisfied than other low-status non-bingers.

"If you're in a community that's big enough that creates its own
social life, you might actually get to not care what the
mainstream campus message is," she said. She added that she hopes
the findings encourage students to back away from the booze.

"Maybe this is a fantasy, but I do honestly hope that some
college students will actually react to this by saying, 'Okay, I
want to rebel against this, I don't even like those people, I
don't want them to define the college experience for me.'"